The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)

[Michael Kerpan]

I would agree that When Marnie Was There is a vastly better fantasy (probably my second most favorite post-Spirited Away Ghibli film, after Kaguyahime and ahead of Poppy Hill).

[Mr Sausage]

I would agree that When Marnie Was There is a vastly better fantasy (probably my second most favorite post-Spirited Away Ghibli film, after Kaguyahime and ahead of Poppy Hill).

I just watched both it and Poppy Hill on Netflix this holiday and had the same reaction. Not only was Marnie a textbook case of taking a pile of sentimental codswallop and building it into a lovely and affecting story, but its animation was impossibly gorgeous, more so than this last Miyazaki I'd say.

[therewillbeblus]

Is bashing his head in a sign of revolt, a way to momentarily escape/avoid triggers, a self-flagellating intervention to communicate the dissonance between the "Man" this boy feels the mature feelings of and desperately wants to become and the fearful shades of youth, the desire to be taken care of, the core belief that he is morally-branded as unloveable by the heavens, who took away his mother.

It's much simpler than that: the boy copes by resorting to violence. He attacks the rural boy after an alienating day at school; he slams a rock into his own face when he finds the fight hasn't helped release his emotions; he builds an instrument of death when he encounters something, an uncanny heron, that he doesn't understand. It's Miyazaki's war critique, an easy resorting to violence, including violence against the self, when confronted with external stressors. Given all this stuff takes place during the portion of the movie with all the WWII signifiers, it's not hard to read the critique. Unfortunately it's not coherent because Miyazaki also wants his boy to be upright and heroic, the kind that charges off to save people at a moment's notice, and also wants the positive female characters, the ones who'll lead the boy away from militarism, to be adept at war.

Oh man, I understand how that fits with his macro-criticisms but I didn't read his use of the boy of a vehicle as one for those purposes. I sensed deep empathy for his inability to understand or make tangible the emotions he was feeling. Violence may be simplest because it's the most tangible act he can concoct, but that doesn't mean it's easy. And I didn't read him as "upright and heroic" at all, especially in Miyazaki's eyes. He reacts impulsively to go into the woods or rescue a tangible asset for the same reason he chooses violence: It's the tangible simple thing in front of him - but the mission isn't easy nor is the experience of punishing oneself, to go through psychologically. I think Miyazaki is just being compassionate to the mess the boy needs to take on alone, outside of the film. It's not that interesting, and he doesn't really know what to do with the rest of it in order to demonstrate that respectful distance while also involving him in a story, but it is a slightly different kind of mature stance and an ascension from where he's been before.

The fantasy world is not his own imagining. It's important to remember that. It's his maternal grandfather's imagining, and its reality is shared by multiple other people in his family (mother, aunt, granny maybe). The fantasy world is not his escapism, it's the grandfather's, and the boy is offered a choice to embrace escapism by becoming the new imaginer, or not. Much of my disagreement with your post in general stems from exactly this problem, that you have an imprecise memory of the movie.

I don't see how that changes anything about my point, though? What I'm trying to argue is that the space he enters isn't a haven to avoid other stimuli, it's still a foreign space of confusion. It doesn't matter whether it's his own internal psyche or the one of a person he is peripherally curious about but cannot truly 'know' - the same theme persists: Nebulous, powerless fear of the world, and an internal conflict between one's emotional identity and the cultural identity of stoicism he feels tasked with as a modulator of his worth. The emotional self, lost amongst a fantasy world he doesn't understand, is validated by the film against that false ideal. The world being the grandfather's makes sense - it's a forced ideology of family value, an incarnation of the boy's history that he feels as is just so far from, combatting a personal quest driven by active, motivated emotion. That conflict between what he should feel or believe and what he does is important. Miyazaki allowing that to remain a work in progress is admirable to me.

It's a stretch to say this mess of a film builds to anything. But if it does, it certainly does not build to that final shot. In fact that shot is inappropriate for a movie where we spend less than a week in that location. It's more appropriate for a story where a kid spends a whole summer in a location having magical adventures, so that the audience also sees something of the passage of time.

I dunno, I see what you mean, but I love it exactly because it goes against the grain and takes on new meaning. If he went back to the room right after a summer of adventures, he'd probably give a hat tip to the heron and we'd be back in Totoro (not a dis, I also like that one more), but that's not what this is. We know that this kid lived for a while longer here in this house, relationship dynamics settled into banal routines and he integrated in some form into this family system. It likely was not glamorous or exciting or adventurous. But at the end of it all, this boy still comes back to the room where the heron showed up and has his moment. That's intrinsic existential value. And that he decided to go back and have that moment to himself after all the memories he's formed in the year since, that makes it even more significant. It's also just his - an acknowledgement (Miyazaki's first incredibly-direct one?) that we really go through this life alone.

I feel like our differences in opinion do not stem from me not remembering the film. I feel like I'm giving the film more rope (perhaps more than it deserves) to credit Miyazaki with crafting important elisions and leaning into intangible discomfort in a new way; and I'm reading a lot of rigid, direct readings from you that are more interested in callbacks to themes he must be repeating, or behavioral lucidity in an act taken by a character, rather than looking at the film as an artistic evolution for Miyazaki (even if that means it's worse!) or leaving space for depth behind that character's action. Which may be the correct ways to read this - who knows. My way isn't better, but that's not generally how I approach films, and I feel like I'm coming at this one from an angle that either you don't see (which is probably my fault for being unclear in my posts, it's been a while since I did any kind of back-and-forth on here!) or don't care for.

Personally, I'd rather revisit most of Miyazaki's stuff over this - I find it off-putting for reasons I can't exactly describe. That moment with the mother you point out and many others were question-marks, a few of the fantasy world's levels and the blandness of the boy's characterization bothered me - even if it was intentional and in many ways a career-spanning payoff of general empathy divorced from specific causes; or some evolved brand of humanism that Miyazaki's drinking. So it's a difficult conversation for me to take part in, because I also disliked a lot about this, just for different reasons. Or maybe even the same reasons, but on a higher thematic plane we differ.

[Mr Sausage]

I feel like our differences in opinion do not stem from me not remembering the film. I feel like I'm giving the film more rope (perhaps more than it deserves) to credit Miyazaki with crafting important elisions and leaning into intangible discomfort in a new way; and I'm reading a lot of rigid, direct readings from you that are more interested in callbacks to themes he must be repeating, or behavioral lucidity in an act taken by a character, rather than looking at the film as an artistic evolution for Miyazaki (even if that means it's worse!) or leaving space for depth behind that character's action. Which may be the correct ways to read this - who knows. My way isn't better, but that's not generally how I approach films, and I feel like I'm coming at this one from an angle that either you don't see (which is probably my fault for being unclear in my posts, it's been a while since I did any kind of back-and-forth on here!) or don't care for.

On my side, I feel like I'm trying to stay rooted in what the film itself is actually doing, while you keep wandering into generalities and rhapsodic imaginings that often have only a slight relation to the film as it plays out. And to be blunt: it's not me who needs to leave "space for depth" in a character's actions, it's the filmmakers'. You've got that backwards.

Oh man, I understand how that fits with his macro-criticisms but I didn't read his use of the boy of a vehicle as one for those purposes. I sensed deep empathy for his inability to understand or make tangible the emotions he was feeling. Violence may be simplest because it's the most tangible act he can concoct, but that doesn't mean it's easy. And I didn't read him as "upright and heroic" at all, especially in Miyazaki's eyes. He reacts impulsively to go into the woods or rescue a tangible asset for the same reason he chooses violence: It's the tangible simple thing in front of him - but the mission isn't easy nor is the experience of punishing oneself, to go through psychologically. I think Miyazaki is just being compassionate to the mess the boy needs to take on alone, outside of the film. It's not that interesting, and he doesn't really know what to do with the rest of it in order to demonstrate that respectful distance while also involving him in a story, but it is a slightly different kind of mature stance and an ascension from where he's been before.

All his actions as well as his stoic, self-reliant demeanor are stereotypically heroic, especially in the context of a folktale. He stands up to a jawing bully, he makes weapons to combat a perceived threat and uses them effectively (thereby taming the titular magical entity and making him his subordinate), he pursues his aunt/mother-in-law the moment she seems in danger, he rarely shows fear, and even in his dream we see him immediately rushing out to save his mother from the flames. There's a clear pattern here. As there is a clear pattern of the boy opting for violence early in the film. These patterns may or may not add up to something coherent (I'm pretty sure they don't), but they are tangible aesthetic and narrative choices we can talk about. Yanking this or that character moment out of context and then working up some general psychological explanation for it, as tho' this were a documentary and not a constructed reality--I don't think that gets us anywhere. Unless the details of the film itself show us a thing, on what grounds could you say your interpretation is true?

Oh, that moment of self-flagelation or whatever? As he doesn't engage in anything like that for the rest of the film, I'm going to say it's another incoherent, underexplained thing much like the boy's sudden shift towards his aunt/step-mum from cool indifference to heroic rescuer. He's not a well drawn or sufficiently explained character, so many of his choices are obscure and not in the sense of opening up an imaginative space to dream in.

[therewillbeblus]

I feel like our differences in opinion do not stem from me not remembering the film. I feel like I'm giving the film more rope (perhaps more than it deserves) to credit Miyazaki with crafting important elisions and leaning into intangible discomfort in a new way; and I'm reading a lot of rigid, direct readings from you that are more interested in callbacks to themes he must be repeating, or behavioral lucidity in an act taken by a character, rather than looking at the film as an artistic evolution for Miyazaki (even if that means it's worse!) or leaving space for depth behind that character's action. Which may be the correct ways to read this - who knows. My way isn't better, but that's not generally how I approach films, and I feel like I'm coming at this one from an angle that either you don't see (which is probably my fault for being unclear in my posts, it's been a while since I did any kind of back-and-forth on here!) or don't care for.

On my side, I feel like I'm trying to stay rooted in what the film itself is actually doing, while you keep wandering into generalities and rhapsodic imaginings that often have only a slight relation to the film as it plays out.

I can see that. It's interesting, I feel like that approach runs the risk of only looking at the surface and missing stuff, especially when the core significance rests in what's acknowledged as an elision - this seems like such a blunt departure (a kind of a failure, but still admirable) in tracing Miyazaki from an auteurist approach - but at the same time, my approach absolutely wanders into suppositions. I find that more interesting, though, especially when we're examining an art that utilizes fantasy. Who knows who's right about some of these intentions/What the Work is Saying, but I feel like I'm also laying out concrete things: e.g. explaining why it being the grandfather's house actually makes me like it more from my side; so even while coming at this from a logical approach, given what we have, I still thought I was engaging with you there without "wandering into generalities and rhapsodic imaginings," etc.

And to be blunt: it's not me who needs to leave "space for depth" in a character's actions, it's the filmmakers'. You've got that backwards.

If it helps, that was what I was leaving up for grabs when I asked who knows who's right. I meant leaving space for depth that the filmmakers are restraining themselves, and so also us, from properly examining. Plenty of films in slow cinema do this, obviously, but I feel like there's a transcendental quality to some anime that can convey this kind of enigmatic relationship with self, from an existential and not always heavily explanatory psychological angle. Anyways, the filmmakers are coercing us into accepting this, so I agree with you about the low quantity they are literally giving us. The difference is that you're saying that's not enough for you, or that shouldn't be enough for the art form, the story it's trying to tell, etc., and that's okay - that can be misguided, messy, lazy, artless filmmaking to some, and maybe this is that. I agree it is in some ways! What I am saying is that I truly believe that this is giving us 'enough', and a mature and welcome choice for Miyazaki, which makes me like it more.

Oh man, I understand how that fits with his macro-criticisms but I didn't read his use of the boy of a vehicle as one for those purposes. I sensed deep empathy for his inability to understand or make tangible the emotions he was feeling. Violence may be simplest because it's the most tangible act he can concoct, but that doesn't mean it's easy. And I didn't read him as "upright and heroic" at all, especially in Miyazaki's eyes. He reacts impulsively to go into the woods or rescue a tangible asset for the same reason he chooses violence: It's the tangible simple thing in front of him - but the mission isn't easy nor is the experience of punishing oneself, to go through psychologically. I think Miyazaki is just being compassionate to the mess the boy needs to take on alone, outside of the film. It's not that interesting, and he doesn't really know what to do with the rest of it in order to demonstrate that respectful distance while also involving him in a story, but it is a slightly different kind of mature stance and an ascension from where he's been before.

All his actions as well as his stoic, self-reliant demeanor are stereotypically heroic, especially in the context of a folktale. He stands up to a jawing bully, he makes weapons to combat a perceived threat and uses them effectively (thereby taming the titular magical entity and making him his subordinate), he pursues his aunt/mother-in-law the moment she seems in danger, he rarely shows fear, and even in his dream we see him immediately rushing out to save his mother from the flames. There's a clear pattern here. As there is a clear pattern of the boy opting for violence early in the film. These patterns may or may not add up to something coherent (I'm pretty sure they don't), but they are tangible aesthetic and narrative choices we can talk about. Yanking this or that character moment out of context and then working up some general psychological explanation for it, as tho' this were a documentary and not a constructed reality--I don't think that gets us anywhere. Unless the details of the film itself show us a thing, on what grounds could you say your interpretation is true?

Oh, that moment of self-flagelation or whatever? As he doesn't engage in anything like that for the rest of the film, I'm going to say it's another incoherent, underexplained thing much like the boy's sudden shift towards his aunt/step-mum from cool indifference to heroic rescuer. He's not a well drawn or sufficiently explained character, so many of his choices are obscure and not in the sense of opening up an imaginative space to dream in.

I think that if we fundamentally disagree on where Miyazaki is coming from here, it's going to be hard to reach common ground. I don't think I'm yanking things around. On what grounds can I say my interpretation is true? I dunno, it speaks to me as someone who's worked with troubled youth for half my life and was one myself. Where "incoherent, underexplained things" like impulsive acts of self-harm happen all the time, not just as patterns in the service of something, and come from a place that's worth just holding space for. I think that's what the filmmakers are doing. I think they're showing a kid they feel true empathy for and showing some experiences of how he's handling a messy world in messy ways, not building a pattern looking ahead at a larger construction. It's not a puzzle piece that adds to something later, so maybe it's not a good script or doesn't speak to you. But moments like that - watching a character struggle from afar who we don't know, because he doesn't know himself, react to the world with such emotion - it is affective. The details of the film show me this because it is how I see youth and have seen youth and it's how I see Miyazaki telling the story in the first section. I'm sorry if you feel like I'm yanking things out of context. The position the filmmakers hold towards the character feels very contextually deliberate and powerful, and yes that too is tangible (even if they don't reveal what might make him a compelling character and this a more compelling movie, like the better ones this resembles). I guess I think showing a lonely boy having a hard time and reacting to things in singular ways outside of a character-developing pattern is interesting (even if it doesn't add up to some artificially-understood, or more texturally-relatable surrogate, which I know isn't what you're arguing for - but are just examples of paths I find also interesting, in addition to this one's interesting angle).

[Mr Sausage]

I can see that. It's interesting, I feel like that approach runs the risk of only looking at the surface and missing stuff, especially when the core significance rests in what's acknowledged as an elision - this seems like such a blunt departure (a kind of a failure, but still admirable) in tracing Miyazaki from an auteurist approach - but at the same time, my approach absolutely wanders into suppositions. I find that more interesting, though, especially when we're examining an art that utilizes fantasy. Who knows who's right about some of these intentions/What the Work is Saying, but I feel like I'm also laying out concrete things: e.g. explaining why it being the grandfather's house actually makes me like it more from my side; so even while coming at this from a logical approach, given what we have, I still thought I was engaging with you there without "wandering into generalities and rhapsodic imaginings," etc.

Ok. I'm the only person so far who's tried to contextualize the film not just in Miyazaki's career but Ghibli more widely, and yet here I am, oddly enough, being accused of failing somehow to be auteurist. And by someone who's spent most of their time making speculative assumptions about the psyches of anime characters set in 1940s Japan. I'm not used to being called an admirable failure for trying to ground my criticisms on the actual art work in question, but here we are apparently. The the idea that a close reading of a text could be relegated to the surface only or unable to interpret a work within the context of a larger body, I refute that completely and utterly. I am at risk of no such thing.

I think that if we fundamentally disagree on where Miyazaki is coming from here, it's going to be hard to reach common ground. I don't think I'm yanking things around. On what grounds can I say my interpretation is true? I dunno, it speaks to me as someone who's worked with troubled youth for half my life and was one myself. Where "incoherent, underexplained things" like impulsive acts of self-harm happen all the time, not even as patterns, and come from a place that's worth just holding space for. I think that's what the filmmakers are doing. I think they're showing a kid they feel true empathy for and showing some experiences of how he's handling a messy world in messy ways, not building a pattern looking ahead at a larger construction. It's not a puzzle piece that adds to something later, so maybe it's not a good script or doesn't speak to you. But moments like that - watching a character struggle from afar who we don't know, because he doesn't know himself, react to the world with such emotion - it is affective. The details of the film show me this because it is how I see youth and have seen youth and it's how I see Miyazaki telling the story in the first section. I'm sorry if you feel like I'm yanking things out of context. The position the filmmakers hold towards the character feels very contextually deliberate and powerful, and yes that too is tangible (even if they don't reveal what might make him a compelling character and this a more compelling movie, like the better ones this resembles). I guess I think showing a lonely boy having a hard time and reacting to things in singular ways outside of a character-developing pattern is interesting (even if it doesn't add up to some artificially-understood, or more texturally-relatable surrogate, which I know isn't what you're arguing for - but are just examples of paths I find also interesting, in addition to this one's interesting angle).

So this is the second time you've called the boy impulsive. Impulsive denotes a lack of control. But one thing we know about the boy is that he is extremely controlled, probably unhealthily so. He's buttoned up, with the stiffest of upper lips. So what's happening when you have a character who is classically controlled and repressed in a society well known for being controlled and repressed, and an interpreter who not only claims this or that action from the character is "impulsive", but doesn't even seem to register the contradiction? I'd say you have someone so in the weeds they've stopped seeing clearly.

This is what I mean when I say you have isolated individual moments from their context and then freely riffed on their contents. So much of your response focuses on this or that single moment, but has no sense of the movement of the whole. So you end up making huge mistakes like repeatedly lableling an obviously controlled person as "impulsive", and then giving the game away by referring it all back to your personal life in this private way. How can you honestly say this is a film with an intense empathy for the kind of youth that you've laid out when it is so plainly uninterested in following up on this self-harming gesture that has meant so much to you? The film isn't even clear about why he self-harms that one time--out of frustration, out of calculation to get out of school, out of a need to punish, it's impossible to say. But in a movie where so much else is confused and undigested, I prefer to be skeptical that it knows what it's doing. From your experience helping kids, do you personally know many of them who have brutally self harmed one minute, and then immediately set out to take control of their lives with confidence, self-direction, and the kind of will to see through complex projects like constructing weapons and learning to hunt all on their own? I mean, maybe. But I don't buy it. This is a strong, proud, resourceful boy with a confidence in his abilities and a righteousness in his choices. If you don't see that, you are deliberately ignoring the movie in front of you for personal reasons of your own.

I don't know why you wanted to argue with me in the first place. It's pretty obvious where I'm coming from, but you've spent all this time alternatively saying we don't disagree but yet also fundamentally disagree, or something. I don't know. I don't have time for pseudo-vatic criticism of the variety you're engaging in here. You aren't entitled to say whatever you want to about a movie just because you think there's an elision. Movies are not blank slates we just project ourselves on to. If you aren't grounding your interpretations in the details of the movie and its context, are you doing film criticism or a creative writing exercise?

I'll end by saying you're a deeply responsive, deeply intelligent person, probably much more intelligent than I could ever be. But I don't think you've read the film very well and I'll stand by that.

[therewillbeblus]

One can be both impulsive and controlled, people are walking contradictions.

I wasn't trying to accuse you of anything, and don't think you're at risk of being myopic. I was just trying to offer the barriers in each of those broad stances, as I saw them, and it was very off-the-cuff. I've noticed my speech has been much more lax and less aggressive than yours during this conversation, so maybe that gives off a 'we agree and don't agree' vibe, since I'm not trying to talk down to you or say you're not seeing clearly. I'm just offering a different way in - it wasn't meant to be a harsh disagreement.

I don't know why you wanted to argue with me in the first place. It's pretty obvious where I'm coming from, but you've spent all this time alternatively saying we don't disagree but yet also fundamentally disagree, or something.

You said he was just trying to be heroic as divorced from fantasy heroism. That's not how I read that, and I was curious to hear your interpretation. It wasn't obvious to me.

I don't know. I don't have time for pseudo-vatic criticism of the variety you're engaging in here. You aren't entitled to say whatever you want to about a movie just because you think there's an elision. Movies are not blank slates we just project ourselves on to. If you aren't grounding your interpretations in the details of the movie and its context, are you doing film criticism or a creative writing exercise?

I'm sorry if you don't have time to hear my side or engage with it. Maybe it's my fault for not explaining clearly, but if that's the case I don't really feel like you've asked about it. So I feel like my initial question was right, and I think you've made it obvious: the way you think I'm approaching the film is stupid and not worth entertaining. So why are you arguing with me? I'm pretty baffled, and no longer finding this a friendly space. Mutual respect and all - yeah. Glad we both liked Poor Things

[Mr Sausage]

But I have heard your side and I have engaged with it. I don’t consider it stupid, but wrong-headed and liable to falsehood. The tone you’re hearing is annoyance and I use it all the time, no doubt wrongly. I just use it a lot less with you than others.

Saying people are contradictory is pretty weak. If a filmmaker tried to defend his own work with such a vapid comment, you’d likely call him out for it. So why make it yourself? This is not a documentary; your characters can’t just do any old thing for any reason.

[therewillbeblus]

You did not seem to be leaving space that he could be both in your comment. My response was cheeky, because of course it's a weak argument and yet obviously true. Like a "..." or whatever. Sorry. Wasn't trying to make another argument out of thin air.

Which I do not feel I have done. I've responded to you too, using the tangible signifiers you've used from the film, and still working within Miyazaki's humanism and never-ending study of experience as theme. Your responses have read like, 'You can't make that argument, and this is why.' I hope I'm not crazy over here making sense to nobody, but either way, it's getting pretty hard to justify giving this movie any more energy

[Michael Kerpan]

Mr. S -- I would say that the animation is Marnie (and Poppy Hill, for that matter) -- served a purpose that fit with the narrative (and enriched it). In B&H, there was all this incredibly over-the-top, technically amazing animation that seemed to serve little or no purpose, other than showing off Miyazaki's mastery as a "god of animation".

Just watched the UHD of Suzuki's insame Branded to KIll -- lots of narrative chaos, but it felt coherent in its own idiosyncratic fashion (even if totally "illogical") -- while B&H just seemed like a bundle of uncongealed ideas and motifs. I honestly feel that if Miyazaki's film had been made by someone who was not already massively lionized, it would have garnered a far different reception.

[Mr Sausage]

Now that I've had a bit of distance, I want to better answer some questions that had come up. I've done it in the pretentious form of a labeled list to help organize it for myself.

1. fantasy vs reality.

I still don't understand knives' and blus' confusion here. I thought saying the film wasn't Brazil ought to've made my meaning clear: this is not a movie about a boy imagining himself to be heroic out of wish fulfillment or any other imaginative desire. He simply behaves heroic to external stimuli in realities that, however fantastical, he still shares with other people.

This film is not about a boy's retreat into fantasy in order to cope with trauma, loss, fear, or anything else. Unlike for example When Marnie Was There, there is no real ambiguity that everything might've been happening in the boy's head, as that would make much of the events incoherent (or examples of psychosis). The fantasy world is like the fantasy world in Spirited Away: it has an origin and a reality outside of the main character and is there as a reflection of and testing ground for the world they will face as an adult. In Spirited Away, it was a magic place out of Japanese folklore more or less; here, a magic place produced by the conjuction of a magical object an architect harnessing its power to dream an alternate, fantastical realm. Both are entered the same way, through an old, decrepit doorway.

2. impulsiveness

Blus' has read actions like the self harming and the sudden running off into the forest after his step-mother as impulsive. And, I mean, sure, they could be that. But what's the point of reading them that way? What does it illuminate about the movie? To me they read not as impulsive, but decisive. That fits with both the boy's controlled demeanor and his general heroism. This also fits with the movie's trajectory, which does not criticize the boy for hastiness, but does criticize him for his fundamental motivations, ie. malice. The movie suggests the boy's tendency towards direct action limits him because he rarely embraces contemplation. The movie is not concerned with a lack of control, but the nature of control. Being fundamentally a man of action, the boy has a narrow frame, and this frame often leads him to direct, decisive actions with violent outcomes. Decisiveness is both consistent with his character and central to both the film's anti-war theme and its real world vs fantasy theme. Impulsiveness is neither here nor there. It does not help us read the character, his actions, or the movie more widely. It's speculation that takes us nowhere.


3. self-harm, war, empathy

Blus has said the film has deep empathy for the boy. I disagree: I think the film has limited empathy because, first off, it doesn't seem to understand the character all that well, and moreover, doesn't do enough to turn him from a flattened type into a rounded character. The boy is mostly surface and at the service of a blunt set of themes that the film handles in a trite manner.

The moment of self harm is blus chief evidence of empathy (at least that he's mentioned). I agree with blus that this moment is meant to show the character's boiling, unverbalized frustrations, but I read it in the context of the boy's tendency to violence within the anti-war frame of the movie as a whole. Blus seemed unhappy with my reading while not necessarily disagreeing, but also seemed to think my reading was ancillary. I would argue that Miyazaki had my reading more in mind, because the scar left by the self-inflicted wound is the boy's own evidence that he is not free of malice and therefore cannot be the one to create a more perfect world. This is a blunt comment by Miyazaki that utopias are impossible because even with the perfect building blocks, humans are still fallen and prey to original sin (a very catholic notion). This is the basic thematic and character thrust of the whole movie, and the self-mortification plays a central role in it. Any empathy is located in the moment alone and has no wider reverberations across the movie. If anything, the movie seems to be indicting the boy for his violence even towards himself, while also sympathizing for a shared human frailty.

As for empathy more widely, it takes a backseat. Funnily, like the boy himself, there is a lot of action in the movie, but not much contemplation. Certainly not like Spirited Away, where there was quiet time for introspective conversation and a questioning of identity, especially the Japanese cultural concept of the inner and outer self. The Boy with the Heron, tho' it has less momentum than Spirited Away, spends more time chasing its plot without much quiet time, and what quiet time there is, is spent with the boy listening in silence while others explain the plot or the world.

Blus has remarked that the film has "carefully crafted elisions" which leave space for more creative and open-ended readings of the characters' behaviours. To me that argument reads as attempting to locate an authority for personal speculation in the filmmakers' choices. But I don't think we can do that here. What blus sees as elisions, I see as underdeveloped material. Little time is spent on the boy's actual interiority, so there isn't much we can say about him beyond what we see and the few things he says about himself. The character is a type rather than a rounded individual. He has a flattened psychology with a heavy focus on personal action and simple motivators. Moments like the self-harm are, like his dreams, meant to drive audience sympathy, but don't evince much empathy since the movie often refuses to dive into what makes him tick. Hence his motivations are often unclear, like why his feelings for his stepmother suddenly shift. Merely saying this is the result of human complexity doesn't work because A. you cannot assume the movie has complexity, you need to demonstrate it first; B. this particular movie isn't working with complex characters, but flattened, typified ones. You cannot say the filmmakers are trying to drive our contemplation of the characters' depths when they're working with a mode of characterization that doesn't have any depth. Any speculation about the character's hidden feelings and motives has to rest on no more authority than you yourself.

4. methodology

We're not free to say to say simply anything about a movie. And blus agrees, because when pressed he has fallen back on certain foundational authorities for his interpretations: the intentions of the artist (that elisions have been "carefully crafted"), and his own personal experience (he works professionally with young boys). So he doesn't really differ from me there. The difference is that I think his application is willy-nilly. He has a tendency to isolate certain moments, derive readings from them, and then apply those readings more widely across the film. He also has a tendency to presuppose coherence in a movie that has not demonstrated it, eg. attempting to find plausible explanations himself for actions or behaviours that the movie has not explained and may not see clearly. Now I do think you can profitably speculate on things, especially in more obscure, experimental stories, or more intimate psychological portraits. Some movies demand an intuitive approach to understanding (my favourite example is Lisa and the Devil, a movie that makes no sense unless you're willing to approach it with an intuitive emotional logic). But in a movie like The Boy and the Heron, which has flatter psychologies, a heavier emphasis on theme, a lineage in folk tales, and a focus on classical storytelling logic, it's less appropriate.

For a movie like this, I prefer a method that focuses on careful attention to structure and theme, and reads the work in the context of genre and oeuvre. I think that method generates better readings for an animated folk tale-ish story than a method that treats the story as a realistic psycho-drama where we can speculate on naturalistic psychologies meant to mirror our own confusions and complexities. And I dispute any suggestion that my chosen method could be limited to surface readings only. It's limited only by how deep you want to take it, while giving you an excellent grounding in any speculations you'd care to make. In fact I think I've given the most comprehensive reading of the film in this thread while also giving a good account of its faults and shortcomings. I think this is a shallow movie, but I don't think I've treated it in a shallow manner.

[therewillbeblus]

Thank you for the structured rundown. I'm going to try to respond in order to your points, but my thoughts are pretentiously organized differently, so bear with me..

1. Completely agree that this functions, less-successfully, as a Spirited Away cousin, including how the fantasy worlds operate. I like how you bring up that he shares this space with other people, significantly people from his life and history that he feels disconnected to - just as he feels disconnected to the world around him in reality. I think this is an important distinction with Spirited Away, as well as a parallel.. Similarly, Chihiro is trying to gain power in a powerless position, saving her 'immature' parents who are impulsive and don't pay enough attention to her and maybe struggle to engage in self-preservation (or is that pig-transformation post-ramen slurping just a subjectively perceived metaphor for Chihiro to feel adult, to see her parents ignore consideration in favor of immature impulses - gluttony trumps affection or 'This is what happens when you don't follow rules' or whatever), but she's also to re-integrate into that familiar, comfortable, (overall) safe-feeling system. I don't get the sense that the boy has felt integrated or secure, and is acting out in tangible ways to attempt to gain (rather than re-gain) a sense of safety under these setting conditions (he is trying to re-gain a stability from a different context). The absence of that security and the details we're shown - that don't repeat into patterns but are nonetheless symptoms of a diagnosable situation - elevate this from a simply boring movie with "flatter psychologies" (which I agree with, and threatens to ruin the film - because, and I think it's important to note, I'm not just watching the movie apologizing for all its faults just because I think it's deeper in the minds of the artist... even if in hindsight I respect the film more for what I see as a comprehensively mature examination).

I'm not sure how this works for your understanding of the logic of the film, but I agree that "this is not a movie about a boy imagining himself to be heroic out of wish fulfillment or any other imaginative desire" but disagree that "this film is not about a boy's retreat into fantasy in order to cope with trauma, loss, fear, or anything else." Sorf-of. I guess that leads into the next point..

2. I do think the boy makes decisions, but based on impulses. The point of reading the decisions as impulsive? Well, my entire reading the film is from an emotional vantage point - albeit one that's largely hidden - hence some of the frustration comprehending my logic, probably. The boy does not intend to retreat into fantasy - the fantasy is forced upon him. I suppose this is the same kind of thing that happens in Spirited Away: child is given challenge/opportunity to grow through coerced participation in a foreign reality based on signifiers known and unknown. However, I do think the 'unknown' elements of the fantasy for the boy are more significant to analyze in this picture. He doesn't feel connected to this family history and lineage - and yet his desperate attempt (yes, a decisive choice, but still an impulse rooted in directionless vulnerability and loneliness, even within the ideological apparatuses of family and culture intended to provide comfort and security, which I believe the film has established) is driven by trauma, loss, and fear, disguised as heroism. The boy is acting 'as if', because it's all that's been provided. But everything we've seen before insinuates that he is not "heroic." I don't think you're arguing that he is, but I illustrate that because I believe it supports that elisions are key here for understanding what that behavioral heroism really 'is', even if the film itself is not inviting us to focus our attention on unpacking what that heroism is and where it's coming from during the film.

I hope you didn't think I was assuming that this was 'all a dream' or that the heroism seen later under conditions demanding palpable exhibitions of resilience was wish fulfillment. Though I do think that the loneliness, isolation, sadness, and the aggressive behavior, including the making of the bow, etc. related to his powerlessness that we witness indicates that the boy wants to be "strong" - the best, most comprehensible cultural touchstone he can grab onto at that age, when it really means "secure, connected to, confident, independent, safe." I really don't think I'm giving the film too much credit to use the details it gives us in the first act to read this psychological profile as concocted by the filmmakers, regardless of how much we're unfortunately kept out of the boy's mind. So yes, he "simply behaves heroic to external stimuli" certainly from a behaviorist examination - which I know is what we're given to work with - but the driving force matters, and it's emotional. It's too complex for either the boy to understand or the filmmakers to adequately express, so it's left as the surface action, but that desperation is made so clear to me at that point that it's challenging for me to minimize those details. They're also more interesting to me, so I freely admit that I'm going to magnetize in that direction.

I also really like your interpretation of the film's workings under this banner, but just want to add that I don't think that reading and mine are mutually exclusive. The movie absolutely "suggests the boy's tendency towards direct action limits him because he rarely embraces contemplation," but I see that suggestion as one divorced from judgment against the character. Perhaps it's because the film really isn't engaging with its character at all that it suffers, but there's no intimate intervention here to bring us closer to understanding the boy through such a suggestion. It's not a 180-degree approach of anti-bildungsroman, but there does seem to be more distance from some conditional nature of allotting value to characters based on their behavior, and a movement towards pure humanism: unconditional consideration for what the boy has been through, and a detached sadness for the boy doing the best he can under these limitations. I don't think it's speculative to say the boy charges into the woods because he's desperately trying to be a part of something he has complex feelings about - this family, this world, Japanese culture and identity, being in his own body.. The film gives us a lot of visual information to support this, although we disagree there. But yes, it is his activity that the film is examining - call it decisions or impulsive decisions, they still feel motivated by emotions rather than thought-out ideas, and read as impulsive in action, based on the information we do have about the character, mostly observed without a pronounced directive on how to understand him due to that distance. I think that context is incredibly important to understand maybe not the character himself, but to empathize with the experience of experiencing loss, trauma, thwarted belongingness, and being at that developmental age. I also think gender plays a key role, but more on that later.

3 / 4. To be as clear as can be, I never meant to accuse you of treating the film in a shallow manner, although I understand that I did not take careful time or attention to ensure that implication was muted, or at least cushioned and rerouted towards what I meant to indicate, which is basically exactly what you did: That some are more or less willing to read a given film with rope allotted to what's not explicitly 'there', based on a variety of factors (that you've laid out clearly). I do have a tendency to come at films from a more emotional place, and pause for longer on isolated moments of clear emotional significance, even if they might not gel with how integrated the artists really are with their material as shown elsewhere. I have a tendency to also look at a film within an artist's oeuvre as comprehensive evolution rather that repetition of theme (i.e. I'm more likely to gravitate towards noticing how an artist tweaked a familiar trope, vs. how they reused it). I won't claim my reading is uniformly correct, but I do think it's worth considering. I think your last paragraph in section 3 is mostly true: It is "underdeveloped material," "little time is spent on the boy's actual interiority," etc. but I think the filmmakers' intentions are to keep him as a "type" and indicate that he is an individual that cannot be honestly accessed via this medium, at least for Miyazaki at this point in his life - who 'gave up filmmaking' but returned ostensibly because a project spoke to him, and I'd guess that it sparked something 'new' for him to perform all the actions needed to bring it to life. Yes, I'm speculating, but based on what I understand about motivation, human behavior, and artistry. Does it mean I'm correct? No. Is it worth presenting? I think so.

I see the film as, maybe not a self-criticism, but an acknowledgement from Miyazaki of his tendency to overexplain or indulge in sentimentality and 'knowable' characters - and an attempt to get away from that. I don't know how to really emphasize the evidence for my reading outside of what I've already done - but the way Miyazaki frames the chaos in the first act, coupled with distance from a boy leaning into simple emotions and actions while carrying pain irreparable from engaging in those simple actions and rigid emotions, and that whopper of an ending.. to me it's clearly indicating a recognition of what we cannot see inside. It brings me back to film school classes on mise en scene - where everything shown must be significant in some way - only applied to what's not shown but hinted at by the scene. I don't think we can just go around saying 'anything' about a movie either, but thematically I think my reading fits with Miyazaki's own life-long attempt to engage with humanity, and his own struggle with humility while moving his characters in that direction on each outing. I am not coming at it from perhaps more concrete themes of his on war, violence, etc. because I don't think he's applying a rigid didacticism here in the same way he has. It's an artistic evolution worth speculating on, from where I'm sitting.

But I also have just as much a right as you to not give a film rope, disregard potential merits in more abstract readings, etc. I do that harshly at times, and coddle movies during other times (Broken record: Who's to say that Assassination Nation is a masterpiece? I've spoken at length about why I think it's brilliant, but a lot of my reasonings for such strong metrics of value are similarly rooted in largely-invisible, artistically-reflexive implications about the emotional dysregulation, literal and felt support structures, etc. by the characters. I think Levinson gives us tons of material to support this, but most are overshadowed by the suffocating aesthetics and provocative, on-the-nose satirical content, so I don't think this kind of engagement is often recognized or even viewed as appropriate). So yeah, anyone who doesn't read the final scene the way I do, or who doesn't care much about the self-harm because it frustratingly doesn't work with the expectation to open up the character and connect with him, is fine holding that opinion. I personally think Miyazaki is meeting this boy where he's 'at', and forcing distance upon himself to support that observational vs. integrating approach to character. And this is where I wonder about gender.

Miyazaki has primarily used female characters - known for being more emotionally expressive and aware in certain western and industrialized civilizations - to reach his thematic means. Or if there are male characters, the women often are utilized as driving forces in sobering the men to their complacency or myopic or impulsive traits. This is an interesting example where there are no real strong female supports to help the boy, or at least he's not letting them 'in' in the same way that Ashitaka lets San influence him in Princess Mononoke, for example. The film could even be seen as abandoning its boy - we're leashed from proximity to the person, the psychology is flat, Miyazaki is curiously removed and removing opportunities for his boy to achieve a sense of catharsis.. But I see this as respectful to where he is, by "showing" abandonment rather than abandoning the boy itself, or implementing devices to artificially 'save' the boy from his troubles. It's a weird film because it operates as a fantasy but ultimately leaves the boy in that room, by himself, different but really the same - just able to cope with life on life's terms better. I do wonder if the shift to a male character is affecting people's responses to it, because of how Miyazaki is using his own experiences of growing up as a male - sheltered emotions, reinforced violent behavior and expectations to take on savior roles, etc. More speculation! But I don't see how that detail be neglected when Japan is such a strongly gendered culture with very specific communication styles and inhibitions for men in emotional expression? I won't go off the rails and say this is Miyazaki returning to his own childhood or anything, but a male filmmaker -whose work indicates that perhaps he's lived a life burdened by being just a bit more sensitive than his peers- coming out of retirement (again, I know) to tell a more reserved and observational story about a young boy.. doesn't mean everything but likely doesn't mean nothing either, and surely contributes to the change in how close we're allowed to feel to the lead.

So, I actually agree with you that the film's approach to a character and fantasy world it seems to only half-care to understand is inappropriately at odds with its otherwise lucid communication of visual ideas and palpable and consequential interpersonal dynamics. It's a very corporeal film, but one that I still find supreme value in the mostly-elided, more spirituo-existential material peppered in there, which seems to be the heart of the film. But again, I recognize why one might prefer a method of analysis that focuses on less parsing out of subtext. On any given day, depending on my energy levels, mood, and the film, I'm willing to do more work than the filmmaker to appreciate the film. Perhaps that's a silly, immeasurable thing to say, but I believe people know what I mean: To try to understand and appreciate an art work that gives its viewer little to work with in that respect. Because I could relate to The Boy and the Heron in a context very well-known to me, I felt comfortable using those stray observations in the first act coupled with the ending and Miyazaki's work to draft a charitable reading to a film I don't actually 'like' a lot. That felt interesting to do. Whether or not you feel I had the right to do that, or it was inappropriate - well, I don't really know what more to say to that. I don't always communicate my ideas as thoroughly or intricately as I once did. I could list all the excuses - I'm busy, shifting priorities in life, don't often reread my posts because that was increasing OCD behaviors, whatever - it's just not good behavior, and I take accountability for that. But I do feel like I've communicated my ideas as clearly as I can for right now. If there's still confusion, I'll try to see this again and respond under different setting conditions.

This wouldn't be the first time I read a director's late-career film as a wise confessional of sorts (of all films, I still think Woody Allen's A Rainy Day in New York is the best recent example of this), and I appreciate the irony of finding merit in the very artistic choices that contribute to a film's flaws, but when I close one eye and blink back and forth, the objective reality in front of me looks different, is placed differently. I don't believe there's an objective way to view a film, and I think a lot of my writing is usually rooted in locating a different, new way, even if I don't believe it undoes, invalidates, or even boasts the strength to challenge other readings - but my ethos in film criticism is that these can coexist even when seemingly antithetical. I'm not so sure we share that philosophy sometimes. I love reading your thoughts to films, though I do think the middle of a Venn diagram on our overlap in style, approach, and analysis would be pretty small. It's probably destined that we'll have a difficult time acclimating to the other's wavelength at times. But yes, I think I may go searching for that internal logic more (flexibly? aimlessly? peripherally?) when the surface-level logic feels wrong, especially when given glances of information that pick at the scabs shielding something clearly important to the artists but too vulnerable and protected to outright rape the character of their privacy to, compared to my peers. That can be a strength or a weakness. In this case, it made me like the film more and I was happy with that, but you seem to view it as a weakness.

Either way, where I will agree with you is that I don't think the film necessarily "earns" my reading, and certainly not the amount of energy I've put into defending it (Mr Sausage, as a poster I respect, is the one who has earned that time and energy - and at this point in my life, there is a very short list I'm willing to try to work with to this length - so this post is essentially affection instead of defensive in purpose) but I would be surprised if other viewers didn't have a similar kind of experience with this boy: looking at him with empathy for his limitations rather than condemning him for it or judging him by those actions, and being with him in that room at the end as a way to validate how meaningful those moments are for us, and how much we sometimes want others to reach through the screen and give us a caring gestures - but we do go through this stuff alone. There isn't a happy return to family and cutesy credits and Kumbaya like Spirited Away et al., even if they're better and more enjoyable films. I appreciated this one for its differences within a filmography, even if those differences made the movie a worse experience. This is probably a poor analogy, but it's what I've got: I don't like Moby Dick very much, but there are two parts in that novel that have changed the way I see the world, and I return to them often as points of reflection in my own life. They're very sensitive passages early on in the book - nearly drowned out by chapters about how tools work and such (I believe a self-conscious and reflexive choice to exhibit anxious disengagement from the vulnerable onto the tangible but superfluous surface-level material) - but I wouldn't discard their worth because of those mechanical chapters threatening to push them down, nor the overall experience of reading a classic and feeling bored and disappointed. Maybe I'm a 'look for the silver lining' type - who knows. The Boy and the Heron ends in a way that leaves a silver lining ambiguous. I found the way that was communicated powerful and fascinating.

[Mr Sausage]

I appreciate the considered reply. Your takes on things are consistently interesting, often coming from such a different stance than would ever occur to me. They sometimes exasperate me, too, I won't lie. But I've never read you and thought "well that was a waste of my time". I only want to add a couple small things:

The boy does not intend to retreat into fantasy - the fantasy is forced upon him.

I just think it's important that the boy is not retreating, but pursuing. He stands up to meet challenges. 'Retreat into fantasy' implies a shrinking and avoidance that the character never shows. The fantasy world does allow him to tackle important, world-affecting challenges head-on whereas his day-to-day reality I guess does not. But I'm not sure the film handles this well as he becomes oddly passive in the fantasy portions, with a sequence of strong women leading him by the hand. It's rather a mess. But this aspect of his personality, that he stands to challenges rather than retreat from them, is pretty consistent (with some caveats, eg. I'm still not entirely sure he didn't fight the rural boy and self harm out of some desire to avoid having to return to school, but it's only speculation. And there is a sense of retreat in the film itself, which I mentioned earlier. Again, messy film).

Also, the discussion keeps slipping between several definitions of "fantasy": as a genre, as a magical plane existing alongside a prosaic reality, and as an personal imagining that hides or distorts reality. The phrase "retreat into fantasy" is the latter, and it's distinct from a character entering a fantastical plane inside a story that is of the fantasy genre. Also, the great bulk of this story is fantasy, including everything around the manor house. The gaggle of grannies are a classic fantasy trope and owe more to Miyazaki's fantastical creations in other films than his realistic figures. So it's hard to say the boy is retreating into fantasy when he's just moving between different fantasy worlds in a genre film. The fantasy world of the film is cathartic, but not generated by the boy's personal emotions any more than it was in Spirited Away.

I don't believe there's an objective way to view a film

I don't either, in the sense that we couldn't inhabit a transcendental viewpoint if we wanted to. But I do believe that films have an objective, stable meaning set at the time of their release and which we can get closer to or farther from understanding. I don't expect anyone else to share this (various post modern ideas are a lot more popular), but it does affect the way I go about discourse.

Whether or not you feel I had the right to do that, or it was inappropriate...

Why would I ever think you didn't have the right to express yourself? I'm not here to silence people, man. Also, I don't mean inappropriate in the sense of an ethical judgement or something, like inappropriate behaviour. I mean inappropriate in the sense of 'works better in some situations than others.'

Also, and I hope you don't mind the more personal comment, but I think you're way too hard on yourself. You seem to think my repeated disagreement (or failure to understand as the case may be) is somehow your personal responsibility, like you just failed to communicate properly. And that's not true. You are a consistently good communicator of your ideas and this thread reflects that. It's not all on you to make us all get together in agreement. Sometimes we just disagree. Sometimes we're incapable of understanding each other no matter how clearly we communicate.

[therewillbeblus]

The boy does not intend to retreat into fantasy - the fantasy is forced upon him.

I just think it's important that the boy is not retreating, but pursuing. He stands up to meet challenges. 'Retreat into fantasy' implies a shrinking and avoidance that the character never shows. The fantasy world does allow him to tackle important, world-affecting challenges head-on whereas his day-to-day reality I guess does not. But I'm not sure the film handles this well as he becomes oddly passive in the fantasy portions, with a sequence of strong women leading him by the hand. It's rather a mess. But this aspect of his personality, that he stands to challenges rather than retreat from them, is pretty consistent (with some caveats, eg. I'm still not entirely sure he didn't fight the rural boy and self harm out of some desire to avoid having to return to school, but it's only speculation. And there is a sense of retreat in the film itself, which I mentioned earlier. Again, messy film).

Also, the discussion keeps slipping between several definitions of "fantasy": as a genre, as a magical plane existing alongside a prosaic reality, and as an personal imagining that hides or distorts reality. The phrase "retreat into fantasy" is the latter, and it's distinct from a character entering a fantastical plane inside a story that is of the fantasy genre. Also, the great bulk of this story is fantasy, including everything around the manor house. The gaggle of grannies are a classic fantasy trope and owe more to Miyazaki's fantastical creations in other films than his realistic figures. So it's hard to say the boy is retreating into fantasy when he's just moving between different fantasy worlds in a genre film. The fantasy world of the film is cathartic, but not generated by the boy's personal emotions any more than it was in Spirited Away.

Thanks for parsing this out. I'm largely in agreement. I don't think he's retreating either, at least in action, most of the time. This isn't what we're referring to really, but I do think there's internal retreating via suppressing emotions by honing in on some fantastical supreme ideal or goal; a situation where pursuing something can be a noble and necessarily thing, but also a distraction from the less-comfortable internal work (which, and I can speak to this personally and professionally, is often seen as not "productive" but stagnant 'work' by our dominant internal parts even in adulthood, so it's not like there's a ton of reinforcement to do this in any developed westernized civilization anyways). Or rather, we tend to go with the known discomfort than the unknown discomfort - but I also think that's just observed as developmentally appropriate here, if still sad. But yeah, none of this is really fleshed out after the first act (which I really loved, especially the bleeding into the fantasy world being more oblivious to the boy - consumed by his own inner emotional chaos - who kind-of ignores the weird signs of fantasy worlds around him - the heron, the giggling grannies- compared to other, more keenly-observant female characters). Anyways, without tracing back through all my posts, I don't believe I was arguing that the boy retreats or escapes in any other way than from his feelings to his tactile capabilities. If the movie is a failure, from my reading, it's because Miyazaki blended with his character's own internal discord, producing something detached from itself, self-reflexively regurgitating phantasmagoric visual ideas that don't really make sense or connect or stimulate because there's a simultaneous, subconscious focus on suppressing the unfamiliar emotional discomfort. That Miyazaki doesn't cave and give himself some cookie-cutter artificial catharsis in the end feels in step with this (though it would be interesting -to me- to hold this reading and interpret such a sentimental bookend as either a regretful surrender or choice of the value in fantasy over real-world horrors he's been worrying about his whole life... but I'm glad it ended as it did).

I wonder if, objectively, it's a mixture of our impressions: Miyazaki was attracted to, and intended to communicate some of the stuff I'm talking about, but not to the extent where it becomes the key theme - and perhaps he felt tugged in two directions (go back to the same formula, focus on the same themes, but also what is this other thing I'm feeling and want to communicate?) I feel like that happens often when you see messy movies that were clearly not intended to be that way. And although I know I argue that many more movies should be absolved of their flaws because of a conscious, thematic implementation of flawed structure and material into their DNA than the average person, The Boy and the Heron is a great example of the opposite case. Some great films achieve merit because of their flaws, and their flaws and merits are defined. Here is a film that achieves merit because of its flaws, but is also flawed because of these merits because they become flaws under other conditions. So the merits are not defined. This explains why it can seem like I'm just saying 'anything' I want about the film - I believe this thematic intent is defined as various points in the film, with enough information to put forth my case, but not defined enough elsewhere to apologize for how they alienate us from a work intended (at least, in part) to invite; and so I do not apologize for the film because of my charitable reading, and see many of the same flaws you do, even in the same way! It's where they can become merits that we seem to get stuck, I think.

You're spot on about my self-consciousness around self-expression and comprehension. There's a reason I lurked here for half my residency: I've never felt confident communicating my thoughts and feelings to others, and fundamentally believe that people will not understand what I'm experiencing, which of course is a symptom of, and causes symptoms that are not healthy. It would make sense for this stuff to come out more publicly when I'm drawing greater therapeutic attention to it in my personal life and posting here less frequently at the same time. It's helpful when people point that out in an objective way in different spaces I occupy, so I can be more mindful in that designated space. Thank you

[Mr Sausage]

but I do think there's internal retreating via suppressing emotions by honing in on some fantastical supreme ideal or goal; a situation where pursuing something can be a noble and necessarily thing, but also a distraction from the less-comfortable internal work

Yeah, the film is pretty upfront about the boy's stoic attitude being a defense mechanism. He's certainly more comfortable building weapons and hunting the heron than, say, sitting down and having a conversation with his new step-mum about what's really going on. I assumed the film would follow up on this in the more fantastical section, breaking down that resistance and showing growth. But it never really did.

Your post reminds me of something Harold Bloom said (or it might've been Bloom quoting Kenneth Burke, I forget), which is that he always asks himself when reading a poem: what is the poet doing for herself as a poet in writing the poem? It strikes me that you're asking a similar question regarding Miyazaki and his film.

[therewillbeblus]

The artist works so hard to produce their work, I just feel compelled to wonder about that, especially about any artist who I feel I 'know' to any degree and can attempt to trace their own personal evolution in stages of life experience through their work - not for diagnostic purposes but out of simple curiosity. I may wind up finding more meaning in an artist's work than they do over time, but the amount of meaning and purpose that went into the activity of the production is unparalleled. I am also not shy about creatively being interested in the self-reflective dreamer, whether he's a character (the depressive Sisyphus fatalistically treading water in the past like Casey Affleck in Manchester By the Sea, or the overthinking egomaniac with an inferiority complex in Woodcutters or an artist like Godard -the great seeker of truth, who knows he cannot locate it, but also gets off on the irony and supreme authenticity in the process of seeking in new ways. I think it goes beyond curiosity in people, and to a curiosity of the egocentric, at times exhaustively active mindset when processing life experience. It makes sense why he's my favorite filmmaker, I suppose.

[soundchaser]

I don't think I can necessarily engage with the thematic resonances of the film as discussed at length above, but I found it (like the few Miyazaki films I've seen) structurally frustrating and at odds with itself. It builds to what feels like four separate climaxes (the confrontation in the delivery room, the subsequent dream, the parade and chase with the Parakeet King, and the rejection of the great-granduncle's proposition) in the last half-hour, and it parcels them out so willy-nilly that I don't understand what the emotional thrust of the film is meant to be.

It doesn't help that several of the most important characters -- Natsuko and the Parakeet King -- feel woefully underdeveloped. I get the sense that the former is supposed to have an arc of her own, but the film just...forgets about her? Treats her like a Macguffin? The latter is so obviously a metaphor for the Axis powers that it probably doesn't bear discussing, but I still don't get him as a *character.*

And selfishly, I wish the heron could have stayed in his original shape instead of turning out to be YET ANOTHER of Miyazaki's bulbous-nosed short folks, which is proving to be his most annoying stylistic idiosyncrasy for me. I will admit that it was a joy to watch animators at the top of their game so clearly having fun with the transformation sequences, but it also would have been a joy to watch a bird with teeth have some adventures.

The film's got plenty of visual pleasures, and I don't want to discount it entirely because I did enjoy it! But the three of this director's films I've seen thus far -- this one, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle -- have left me wondering what I'm missing in all the effusive praise he garners.

[The Narrator Returns]

The three you've seen all fit neatly into the side of Miyazaki that gives me more trouble, the dense fantasy epics that don't leave a lot of room for emotional connection (though I liked Boy and the Heron a lot and found it very touching by the end, if only because of the part that's a lot like

SpoilerShow

Petite Maman

), if I'd only seen those I too would be on the outside looking in with him. But I love the much smaller-scale Miyazaki movies like Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Totoro, which are no less visually dazzling than the big ones and move me a lot more for their quiet and unashamed silliness. I recommend giving those a shot before you fully decide that Miyazaki isn't for you.

[therewillbeblus]

I'd go with Princess Mononoke next. Its grand in scope, but rooted in a very familiar kind of valorous adventure tale with rich characters and themes. Most people I know who only like one Miyazaki film usually love that one amidst the rest

[Mr Sausage]

A lot of Miyazaki’s films aim at an overwhelming sense of wonder and enchantment, but can be thin outside of that. So if you’re not caught up in the magic of it all, it’ll be hard to understand the universal praise.

I’d echo the recommendations above, but would add:

Castle in the Sky. It’s all about whimsy and enchantment, but there’s such an old-school sense of boy’s adventure that you might find easier to be caught up in.

Nausicaa. I’m not the biggest fan of this one personally, but it’s an outlier in being a big, dense sci-fi epic, and you might find it a nice tonic to the big child-oriented fantasies.

[therewillbeblus]

Watched this again, and was more taken with the visuals (unsurprising for a Miyazaki film) than themes, but begun thinking how one inspires the other. What's interesting is how long the build-up is to the fantasy, and how the boy's rudderless anger flourishes in 'reality', whereas he only achieves (impermanent) moments of semi-catharsis in fantasy. This includes the dreams about his mother in the 'reality' section, because even if he is disturbed by them, they indulge an urge to get closer to his mother and connect in some dramatic manner. Otherwise, the boy is frustrated when he's not in the thick of marvelous visuals and wonderful adventures in fantasy. New stimuli becomes increasingly acceptable in the fantasy, where it wasn't in reality, and through accepting that information in the fantasy (and 'connecting' as he wishes he could, only to realize the impermanence of this is a part of life), the boy is able to accept his state of living in reality. I think Miyazaki is getting at something, throughout his work, about the importance of dreaming (not necessarily while asleep, but states of play, imagination, wishing, etc.) on working through traumas and difficult states of being, particularly for youth without much control. Perhaps not a novel perspective, but one I think this film captures well even if it is a mess in other areas. Though I don't like it as much as its cousins (e.g. Spirited Away), the messiness and disengaging aspects may actually aid me in 'letting go' from an expectation of coherence in dream logic and just surrender to the film not being about a moral caught in the dream world (I know there is, but not as pronounced as in his other work, and somewhat superfluous next to the impact of the emotional change - looser and disconnected rather than tightly connected in Spirited Away's narrative; i.e. the trust in self to identify the parents at the climax). Rather, the dreaming or fantasy elements in and of themselves allow the boy a therapeutic plain to let go of these expectations as well.

So it may still be a self-reflexive film in its messiness, intentionally or otherwise. I think I'll have to continue to make compromises in how I engage with this film going forward in order to surrender to the visuals like the boy; otherwise, I may wind up irritated as there's certainly a lot of incoherence to be troubled by if disregarding such a reading.

[Yakushima]

A new two-hour documentary, HAYAO MIYAZAKI AND THE HERON, is now streaming on HBO Max. It is absolutely fantastic.